Valerie Harper talks to her cancer

Today, one “year and four months past my expiration date” — when doctors told her she’d be dead — Valerie Harper testified before a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing to plead with Washington for more money for research and treatments to fight the kind of cancer that threatens her life.

Sure, she exercises, undergoes acupuncture, eats wisely, sips medicinal Chinese tea and gets regularly scanned. But as an actress, Harper has other treatment tricks up her sleeve, as she revealed to senators including Susan Collins and Bill Nelson:

I engage in visualization, which is actually an actor’s tool, visualizing myself kicking out the cancer, making up scenarios. I talk to them: ‘You guys, if you don’t go crazy, we can co-exist, but you’re killing the host.’